No gaming news this week. We had a flood last week and I’m still dealing with the aftermath.

At around 4 am last Monday I was in my nerdcave, which is in our basement, checking my email and playing my PBEM turns before thinking about going to bed. Just as I sat down, I heard running water behind me. I hit mute on my remote to see what was making that noise through my surround sound system...but the sound continued.

Scene Of The Attack

As I turned around, I was greeted with the sight of a waterfall coming from the single ceiling-height window in my room. I quickly removed the Oddworld banner and insulation from the window sill (that keeps the nasty sun from ever penetrating this room) and found myself staring at a window half submerged in water. The water was pouring through what was likely older window seals and, of course, these windows aren’t made to hold back that type of water.

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I quickly woke up my wife and had her deal with the indoor emergency while I headed outside to bail out the window well.

It was raining hard and the temperature had gone from -5C (23F) to 12C (53.5F) in an extremely short period of time. The heavy rain and the rapidly melting snow caused for a significant amount of water to form on our lawn.

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The problem was that there was a ton of snow and ice on our property before the rain started and this prevented normal drainage. The pooling water took the path of least resistance and poured into the window well of my nerdcave.

If you want to see an aging geek shovel through ice and snow for three hours straight, then all you need to do is threaten his kingdom. I dug through three feet of snow and chipped through blocks of ice to make two trenches, that probably total 150 feet in length, to allow the water to reach the street. I was drenched to my underwear when I was finished and every ounce of energy was spent, but the water was flowing away from the house and the window well could finally drain at a normal rate.

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When I awoke on Tuesday, my body was wrecked. Long gone was the adrenaline that powered my body and every inch of me hurt. My hands took the brunt of the damage and it is still hard to hold my toothbrush, so even if I was able to game last week, I couldn’t.

My nerdcave is still out of commission and I played nothing all week save for my email games of Civ VI and Age Of Wonders 3 on my laptop. I’m hoping things will be dry this weekend and I can move back in. We thankfully had little damage, though I did lose some video game art that my kid had made me over the years and that’s a painful loss. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I went to bed an hour before the flooding started.

So, let me know what you are playing this weekend. I need to game vicariously through you.